The first thing that most small business owners want to get in order when talking to accountants, is to get their bookkeeping up-to-date and to make sure that they are compliant with company and tax laws and regulations.

But, what then? Once you have your accounting and compliance under control, who is helping you to streamline your processes and accelerate your growth? Who is helping you to reach that next level where you can pay yourself a decent salary, without working 60 hours a week?

If you’re ready for that next step, we can help. Here are some examples of business functions that we can take off your plate, or guide you to implement the right strategies so that you can grow your business.

One of the most important business strategies is to streamline your processes: To standardise your operating procedures, to automate the tasks that you can, and to get rid of bottlenecks. Many small businesses start out with one or two people doing everything, but as you grow and add more staff members, winging it is no longer an option.

It’s crucial to implement standard operating procedures so that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do, and in which order. And, when you employ new staff members, they can just hit the ground running because they are clear about what you expect of them.

But just having procedures in place doesn’t necessarily mean you’re golden. Your processes may be ineffective with too many steps, bottlenecks, or even tasks that you can automate for which you’re currently paying someone by the hour to perform.

We can help you to streamline your procedures and to choose and implement the right tools and apps that can save you hours and hours every week, while still having the necessary checks and balances in place to comply with laws and regulations.

You know how important it is to compile budgets and forecasts for your business to measure your performance and to manage your cash the best way possible so that you don’t run out of money when you need to make an important payment.

But compiling these is easier said than done – especially if you haven’t done it before. You may forget about a yearly expense that you need to include, or to adjust your estimates for inflation and other increases, or you may be too optimistic about the number of products you think you can sell. You may even make an error when setting up your formulas – something which can turn a nice and healthy profit into a loss!

We can help you to compile your budgets and forecasts, and even suggest apps and tools you can use to track all your transactions in real time so that you can avoid any unnecessary mistakes. With the right integrations between your accounting software and forecasting apps, you can literally log in whenever you need to, and look at an accurate picture of your financial performance and health without having to input any numbers manually. That way, you can spend more of your time on analysing the data and making important business decisions, instead of trying to get your data up-to-date.

You can’t stop at planning for the future. Once that future arrives, you need to analyse your performance and measure whether you’ve reached your goals, and if not, why not. Analysing your performance is important so that you can plan better going forward, spot any costs you can cut, or where you should spend more time and money to improve performance, like on marketing or automation strategies.

Here are a few examples of why some actual numbers may be different than anticipated:

• An unexpected increase in supplier prices, a weakening Rand causing the prices on imported products to rise, or a petrol price increase.
• More staff employed to finish a project by the deadline.
• Processes taking longer than anticipated, causing employees to work overtime.
• More – or less – products sold than anticipated.

We can help you to analyse your month-over-month and year-over-year performance. We can help you to identify which increases in expenses were unavoidable and which you need to plan for going forward, and which costs you can actually avoid or decrease.

Once you’ve analysed the data, you can start to make more informed decisions.

Should you cut expenses further? Should you spend more money on profitable areas to increase your income even further, or on areas that need improvement like automating tasks that waste unnecessary time? Maybe you need to decide whether to invest in a new product or business venture, but you’re not sure whether it’s going to be as profitable as you hope it would. Or you’re considering buying new equipment, but you’re afraid that you’ll run into cash flow problems a couple of months down the line.

We can run the numbers for you, show you a few different scenarios, and help you to make those critical decisions.

Now that you have a better idea of where we can help you to cut unnecessary costs, improve performance, and grow your business, let’s chat. Get in touch with us to discuss your needs and to see whether we’re a good fit for your business.